Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day016.01
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London
Monday, 7th February 2000
Before:
MR JUSTICE GRAY
B E T W E E N:
DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
Claimant
-and-
(1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
(2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
Defendants
The Claimant appeared in person
MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport
Lyons
and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
Second Defendants
MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons)
appeared on
behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
PROCEEDINGS - DAY SIXTEEN
. P-1
Day 16 Monday, 7th February
2000.
(10.30 A.m.)
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving and Mr Rampton, I
have received a
letter from I think it is a German lawyer called
Gunter
Murmann, the significance of which is not
immediately
obvious to me, but I thought I had better hand it
down to
you to make what you will of it. I know you have
been
receiving a lot of similar documents. Have a look
at it
when you have a convenient moment. Yes, Mr
Irving?
MR IRVING: May it please the court. I have
here this morning
a witness on summons, Sir John Keegan. I also
have a
number of points that I wish to submit to your
Lordship.
I think, out of fairness to Sir John Keegan, we
ought to
hear his evidence first, and then I will put to
your
Lordship the various procedural points which I
wish to.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That sounds perfectly
sensible. Let us have
him straightaway.
MR IRVING: I call Sir John Keegan.
< SIR JOHN KEEGAN, sworn.
< Examined by MR IRVING.
Q. My Lord, Sir John's
evidence will go entirely to
reputation and no other matter in this court. Sir
John,
first of all, to make it perfectly plain to the
court, you
are here pursuant to a witness summons, in other
words,
what used to be called a subpoena. Is that
correct?
A. I was subpoenaed by you.
I would also like to say that
. P-2
until this moment I have never met you, never
spoken to
you and never corresponded with you.
Q. That is precisely what I
was going to ask next. In other
words, I have not rehearsed with you in any way
what
I might or might not ask you by way of questions?
A. I would not have agreed to
that in any case.
Q. Yes, of course.
A. Sir John, you are now
Defence Correspondent for Telegraph
Newspapers Limited?
A. Defence Editor.
Q. Defence Editor of
Telegraph Newspapers Limited. How long
have you held that post, please?
A. I was Defence
Correspondent to begin with in 1986 and
became Defence Editor about 1990.
Q. You have, it is fair to
say, a very high reputation in
England as what I might call an establishment
historian?
A. Well, I was knighted for
services to military history
Q. My congratulations and the
congratulations of the court go
to you for that very recent honour. It was in the
New
Year's Honours list?
A. Yes.
Q. I do not wish to detain
you at all long, Sir John, here
this morning. I am grateful to you for coming in
spite of
your disability. I just want to take you through
a number
of papers which I have handed to you a few minutes
ago
going back to 1980. I believe your Lordship also
has that
. P-3
small clip of them?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do. Thank you very
much.
MR IRVING: Do you remember writing an article
for The Times
Literary Supplement in about April 1980?
A. Yes, I do not, because I
review a great deal, but I am
quite sure that I did write what is quoted here.
Q. Is it right that in that
review you wrote -- this is a
review of another book, not a book by myself?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, both, is it not?.
A. I am sorry, I did not
understand the question.
MR IRVING: This was not reviewing a book by me,
was it? It
was reviewing some other book.
A. If you say so.
Q. Is it right that you wrote
the following words: "Two
books in English stand out from the vast
literature of the
Second World War, Chester Wilmott, 'Struggle for
Europe'
published in 1952 and David Irving's 'Hitler's
War' which
appeared three years ago"?
A. Yes, and that is my
general opinion. I think that, taken
together, they are -- if I were to recommend to a
starter
two books which would explain the Second World War
from
Hitler's side and from the Allies' side, those are
the two
books I would choose.
Q. This does not, of course,
mean that you endorse or accept
all the views that I might be held to propagate in
them or
not, or otherwise?
. P-4
A. Indeed not, because later
on in the papers you have given
me I reprove you for your lack of a moral point of
view in
your discussion of Hitler and of his status
relative to
Churchill and Roosevelt.
Q. Is it right to say that
this opinion which you expressed
in that review was not only publicly held but also
privately held by yourself?
A. Yes. I often say you have
to read Hitler's War.
Q. Can I draw your attention
to letter No. 2 in the bundle?
This is a letter from a man called Mr Alan
Williams?
A. Yes, he used to be my
editor at the Viking Press, my
American publishers.
Q. Yes. The late Alan
Williams was also my editor, of
course, so he knew us both. Is it true that
sometime
early in 1980 you had a conversation with our
mutual
friend, Alan Williams, in which you commented on
the same
book 'Hitler's War'? Will you read, please, the
middle
sentences of the second paragraph? Does he state
----
A. "John Keegan is, as you
may know, writing a book for us on
the D-day invasion. While we were talking about
it, he
said that there were two general survey books that
really
stood head and shoulders above all the rest, one
of them
the Chester Wilmott and the other 'Hitler's War'".
Q. He did not know ----
A. "He did not know I had any
involvement with the latter
volume when he said this".
. P-5
Q. Thank you very much. Were
you expressing your true
opinion in that conversation with Mr Wilmott?
A. Of course.
Q. Has he accurately
reflected in this letter what your
opinion was at that time?
A. Yes. Alan Williams and I
were great friends.
Q. Yes, he was a man of
insight and perception. In fact,
I gave him a silver tray from Harrods inscribed
for his
bravery in publishing my book. He had it
displayed in his
office. Would you turn to page 5, Sir John?
A. Yes.
Q. Is this a panel from the
Sunday Telegraph of August last
year?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it headed "Book of the
Century"?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you there make your
choice of which book you considered
to be the book of the last century?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you remember what book
that was?
A. Of course, it is a
'Struggle for Europe'. I regard it as
a slightly odd choice, and I do not expect many
people to
support me, but it happens to have been an
enormously
informative influence on me.
Q. I also read it. I agree
with you, for what it is worth.
It is a very fine book indeed. So your opinion on
the
. P-6
Chester Wilmott book had not at that time changed?
A. No.
Q. You still rank it among
the highest. Finally, would you
turn to pages 6 and 7 which, I am afraid, is the
only copy
I have of a two page extract from your recent book
'The
Battle for History'.
A. Yes.
Q. Will you agree that in
that you repeat once again, 16
years after the first time you expressed this
opinion ----
A. Yes, I do.
Q. --- that Hitler's War was
a valuable book?
A. Indeed, you are honest
enough to include a message on the
Internet which points out that you omitted ----
Q. One sentence, yes, in the
bundle. Would you read out that
sentence too perhaps, for the record? This is
somebody
writing an e-mail to me, chiding me.
A. Could I quote the whole
thing?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would help me if you did
because I am not
sure which sentence has been omitted from what.
MR IRVING: I am not sure if it is in your
Lordship's bundle.
It would be page 10 if it is in your Lordship's
bundle.
Do you have page 10?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do.
MR IRVING: Would you read out that brief
message on page 10
from a correspondent?
A. It is a message from
somebody called Graham Broad on a web
. P-7
site, dated 28th December 1999: "If Mr Irving is
going to
quote John Keegan when Keegan supports him, he
might as
well have the integrity to quote him when Keegan
does
not. He cites at length from Keegan's'The Battle
for
History', but does not, to my knowledge, anywhere
on this
web site quote Keegan's remark on page 10 of that
book.
Some controversies are entirely bogus, like David
Irving's
contention that Hitler's subordinates kept from
the fact
of the Final Solution".
Q. That is, of course, still
your opinion, is it not?
A. I am sorry?
Q. That is, of course, still your opinion, is it not, that
I am wrong on the Holocaust, or that my opinion on that is
flawed?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That Hitler did not know.
A. Well, I read Hitler's War, the appropriate passages, very
carefully over the weekend, and I continue to think it
perverse of you to propose that Hitler could not have
known until as late as October 1943 what was going on to
the Jewish population of Europe, and indeed many other
minority groups as well, not only minority groups.

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